Thursday, June 1, 2017

My wife and I have spent the past few weeks buying a house, packing, and moving. We're finally starting to settle in at the new place, and I have a ton of projects in mind for my new studio. Now that I know I'll be staying put for a long time, I feel a lot more comfortable investing time and money into a great studio space.

I'll be posting about my studio progress and detailed tutorials of each of the projects.

The finished studio palette, on an old nightstand which I have turned into a painting cart:

In the coming months I plan on building a large painting cart, but until that happens I need something else to get by. I've used this small nightstand for a while now, and my old glass palette used to sit on it. The cool thing about this nightstand is that it's 16x20 inches; just the right size for a 16x20 piece of window glass from the hardware store.

Supplies: 1/2 inch plywood (cut to the exact size of the glass on a table saw), 7 feet of wood corner molding, and a 16"x20" pane of glass.

Paint the back side of the glass with your preferred color. I like a medium grey.

Using some clear silicone adhesive, apply the glass to the plywood (painted side down)

Once the four sides have been measured and cut, it's time to start gluing. Apply a line of silicone adhesive on the glass. Apply wood glue on the edge of the plywood, on the inside edge of the molding, and on the corner edges of the molding.

Detail shot of the corner

Use your favorite clamps to hold the molding until it dries. These clamps are strong, so I used some scraps of cardboard to protect the wood.

Leave it to dry overnight, sand, and you're all done! You can apply stain and varnish if you like. I used "golden pecan" wood stain (Minwax), followed by three coats of polyurethane varnish.